


Twilight of the Gods

by AlwaysLying



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: 2011-2013 Thor, Competent loki, Non-Ragnarok-compliant, eldritch abomination Hela, maybe some actual emotions, mild body horror, ragnarok fix-it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 19:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18581212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysLying/pseuds/AlwaysLying
Summary: "What more is there to explain?" Loki said instead. "We are on the verge of losing everything."





	Twilight of the Gods

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel. This wouldn't have happened if I did.

"You're awake."  

The voice was amused, a little mocking, and entirely too familiar.

"From the strangest of dreams..." Thor frowned groggily as he sat up, stretching. "There was a talking skeleton in it.  Perhaps it was the mead—”  

He glimpsed his surroundings and broke off. "Where- what- how-"

"Ah, yes; excellent timing, brother. Asgard lies in shambles, while you lay on the ground accusing everyone around you of bringing about your hallucinations.”

Thor glared behind him - as if it were _his_ fault; Loki was always chiding him for failing to predict things no one could _possibly_ have foreseen - when the reality of the situation hit him.

"You're alive!" he said, startled, and then he remembered - "You faked your death!", accusing.

Loki's smirk disappeared, and he glared back at Thor.

"I _will_ put you back to sleep if you start this again," he warned.  "I hadn’t planned to come back from Svartalfheim.” 

Thor couldn't help but snort.  “As if you’d have left Asgard to me.”  Then something more important hit him.  "But what has happened to Asgard?"

Loki raised an eyebrow. "You really don't remember?"

Thor concentrated.  The truth flashed, then slipped free from his grasp, slippery as an eel.  Memories blurred around him. The last distinct one was sitting in a cage with that skeleton in Muspelheim…

…

It had been a minor detour.  After a futile yearlong search for the Infinity Stones, Thor had found himself in Muspelheim.  There was a dimensional rift somewhere on the planet.  It would have led him somewhere.  He wasn’t prone to finding out more than that before a quest. 

Only word bubbled up of Surtur’s continued existence, and letting the realms succumb to tyranny was against the nature of any free Asgardian.  He fought his way into Surtur’s palace, red and black and shining, teeming with demons and wyrms who crawled through its hallways like grubs under a stone.  Allowing himself to get caught was part of the plan.  The fire demons exerted themselves comically to restrain him.  He amused himself by offering light resistance, watching them howl and turn red and white with burning fury until eventually he pretended to grow weary, and let them stuff him into a cage, small enough that he could barely stand upright. 

A skeleton sat in the cage with him.  Bits of armor still clung to its frame – a helmet framed its skull, and fragments of greaves wrapped around its leg-bones.  Its fleshless hand clutched a wide sword that gleamed in the firelight; a blue, iridescent sheen. 

“Ho, brave warrior,” Thor said jovially, raising his hand in mock greeting.  “I suppose you’d like to know how I found my way here?” 

The skeleton grinned silently at him. 

“It is a long tale,” said Thor.  He shifted position, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit.  The skeleton’s legs took up half of the cage, and he ended up having to drape his legs over its feet.  He sighed and looked around. 

The sword, gleaming, caught his eye. 

 “Tis a fine weapon you have, friend,” he said, studying it more closely.  “Indeed, I have a companion who might make good use of it—” thinking of Sif, who had taken to fighting with a shield lately, but who might be convinced to reconsider the merits of a fine blade if presented with one so striking as this “—so if you don’t mind, I will be bringing it along with me.” 

He reached out and pried the skeleton’s fingerbones off the hilt and grasped it, carefully maneuvering it toward him. 

The blade gleamed, still with that startling blue.  He turned it to the firelight, and it grew brighter, and brighter still, until it was glowing with an otherworldly light. 

A voice seemed to emanate from the back of his mind.  _Free…_ it said, sounding shockingly similar to his own voice, but rougher, and full of mirth.  _Free at last…_

It began to chuckle darkly, and that was the last Thor knew, before the entity that had entered his mind led him through time and space on a fool’s quest.  Flashes beset him – an old man in a bathrobe, a forest of blades, fighting against the Hulk – things that could not be, and yet were…

…

"I remember glimmers," he said. "As of lands glimpsed while flying through a storm."

"Perhaps it's for the best that you don't remember more," Loki said.

Thor looked up at him, startled. That had been almost kind.

It made him suspicious. 

"Asgard has fallen, to a mad queen who glories in the death of her people," Loki continued. "Countless deaths - warriors and innocents alike - barely served to block her way for the day's reprieve we have.” 

“When did this happen?” said Thor, dread pooling in his stomach.  “Where was I?  Why did I not—”  

“You were… otherwise occupied,” Loki said, with a glint in his eye that didn’t help the dread in the slightest.  “A minor mental parasite managed to get the better of you.  It took possession over your mind.  If it hadn't been for the Valkyrie, perhaps you would have been lost forever."  His expression shifted for a microsecond before settling back into ordinary condescension, but Thor didn’t miss the flicker of concern.  “Hardly a loss.  What in the Nine possessed you to touch that cursed blade?” 

Thor ignored him.  “What sort of parasite dared invade my mind?” he asked.  Not for nothing had he spent centuries conditioning his brother to answer his questions before lecturing him, and afterward, when Loki went on about how Thor should have read the manuscripts or gone to the Yggdrasil display and made notes, Thor could listen with half an ear without suffering overmuch. 

Like clockwork, Loki sighed and answered.  “An entity from the depths of Muspelheim,” he said.  “It held many names, but by the end it answered to ‘Chris’.  It was a being of mischief, intent on making those around it seem ridiculous.” 

“I’m surprised you didn’t get along, then,” Thor said drily.  Loki made a slight choking noise that sounded like he was holding back a laugh, so Thor counted that as a victory. 

“It was perhaps not overly fond of me,” he admitted.  “Once it discovered you were a prince of Asgard, it grew enamored with your lofty station, and wound its coils tightly around your mind, using every crack in the seams – every surge of uncontrolled anger, every hatred, every unguarded passion – to insinuate itself deeper—”

“Stop!”  Thor said, horrified.  “I should not have asked—”

“After its conquest was complete,” Loki continued relentlessly, “the entity used your form and station to demand everything you might have claimed, to fuel its need for a spotlight that shone only for itself.  It sought to batter down all who stood in its way—”

“Enough,” said Thor, and this time Loki complied.  “What has happened since then?” 

“Oh, we unleashed one of Odin’s sealed horrors designed to end the world,” Loki said nonchalantly.  “She declared herself Queen of Asgard yesterday.” 

“How did this happen?”  Thor demanded. 

“After your father—”

“So we found Father, then?” 

“We never exactly _lost_ him,” Loki said.  “Unfortunately.  But when the Chris entity barged into my chambers—”

"I remember that," Thor said, surprised – bits of recollection were slowly returning to him. "You wore the guise of the Allfather, and no one had seen through the trickery."

Loki shot him a look of such withering contempt that he almost laughed - it was too familiar.

"Did you really think that I would have _stayed disguised as the Allfather_ for _four years_ and somehow maintained the ruse while keeping peace in the Nine Realms?"

"It seems like the sort of mad thing that you would do, yes," said Thor blithely. Loki scoffed.

"I can't imagine how we ever discovered you were being possessed," he said. "The demon's blundering idiocy was perfectly in character."

Thor got to his feet angrily at that, then wished he hadn’t – his limbs wobbled like those of a newborn calf, and his vision swam and blurred. 

Again, that flicker of concern; so subtle Thor was uncertain it had not been only his own imaginings, desperate to see some good in his brother. 

“I wouldn’t,” Loki warned.  “You’ll be out of commission for a while longer.” 

“How long?”  Thor demanded, staggering a bit. 

“How should I know?” his brother snapped, his irritation achingly familiar, years and centuries reaching across the chasm that had grown between them.  “Long enough for your mind to throw off the effects of the possession.”  

Thor shook his head.  The effect was dizzying; he swayed on his feet.  “I will not sit idle while Asgard burns,” he insisted, trying to blink away the doubles of everything he saw. 

“Anyone who saw you half an hour ago would beg to differ.  And you could hardly do anything else.”

Thor sighed.  This was just like the time when a draugr had impaled him during the Battle of Brávellir, and his brother had teleported him despite his protests to the healers’ tent and restrained him with magic until he’d grudgingly resigned himself to his fate.  To their credit, the healers had cleaned the wound and stitched him up early enough that it had not even left a scar after, and so Thor could not entirely deny the merits of his brother’s approach. 

“Tell me what’s going on, then,” he said. 

Then something occurred to him. 

“Weren’t you _listening_?” his brother was saying, but the words barely registered. 

Something felt different. 

Thor frowned.  He couldn’t seem to put his finger on it, but his head felt… lighter, somehow…

He reached up, tilting his head to run his hand through his hair. 

His hand met close-cropped bristles, like the fur of a dog – or, worse – a slave—

“Loki!” he said frantically, reaching up with both hands – this couldn’t be true; it had to be some trick, some illusion – “undo your magic!” 

“What— _oh_ ,” said the thrice-cursed poisonous mage, and he actually _laughed_.  “I see you’ve acquainted yourself with the _rest_ of the entity’s mischief…”

“WHAT!”  Thor howled, gripping what was left of his hair – his lovely hair – with both hands.  “You mean to tell me—”

“That a Sakaarian native kindly provided you with a haircut?  Why, brother – the entity practically _insisted_!  It’s quite the improvement; if only Father could see you now—”    

Thor roared and swung at him, and his treacherous brother smirked and danced back a step, power glowing at his fingertips—

And then it winked out.  Loki stopped, and looked suddenly annoyed. 

“We don’t have time for this,” he said.  “The fate of Asgard hangs in the balance."

"Come again?" said Thor.

Loki clearly wanted to make another quip about Thor’s intelligence, but held his tongue - probably to avoid devolving into brawling, which was a shame, because brawling seemed a lot easier than having to deal with all of this.

"What more is there to explain?" Loki said instead. "We are on the verge of losing everything."

"And how did we get here?” said Thor. "Tell me everything I've missed."

"Everything you've missed, brother?" Loki said innocently, because the bastard apparently could not contain himself for one second. "The stars themselves would burn to blackened crisps before I managed to cross a gap so vast-"

Thor reached for his hammer, but it didn't come, which alarmed him.

"Where is Mjolnir?" he said frantically. "Loki, what have you done?"

"Why do you assume it's my fault?" his treacherous brother grumbled. "While we were busy dealing with Odin’s pet monstrosity-"

"The one we’re fighting against?” 

"Yes; the Allfather told us-"

"When did we find him?" Thor interrupted.

Loki glared at him. "How in the Nine do you imagine I'll ever be able to tell you anything through your constant interruptions? If you had a scrap of sense..."

"Start at the beginning," said Thor. "How did you survive on Svartalfheim?"

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to anyone who felt alienated or upset by Thor: Ragnarok


End file.
